Everyone knows that print media is in trouble. Some major newspapers all over the country are closing their doors. Magazines like Newsweek have seen their production quality erode appallingly fast. Publishing mogul Rupert Murdoch has been joined by the Associated Press in declaring that from now on Internet users are no longer going to be able to enjoy a free ride. So what can be done about the pending doom of print media? I’m not sure anything can be done, but I have a few ideas that can maybe make someone some cash along the way.
First, I strongly suspect we are witnessing a massive disruption in our media distribution. It is just the ill luck of print media that they happen to be first. Within a decade this disruption will have affected all media. I can only begin to guess what the final landscape will look like, and can only stay that it will be different from what we’ve got now.
Delaying actions such as the AP and Murdoch attempting to charge for content are simply that– futile efforts to stave off the inevitable. Maybe the final solution will be that some content will be paid for, but it will be in a different form than what these two giants are proposing. Looking over at the music industry for a moment can offer a hint of something that may work.
iTunes has its problems, but it has proved that the public is willing to pay $.99 for a song. The price is so cheap that it probably encourages re-buys. So what if I accidentally erased my favorite tune, I’ll just go back to the iStore and buy it again for a dollar. No big deal. Print media has a slightly different problem though.
Where someone is willing to pay a dollar for a recording, I sincerely doubt the cost of reading an article is worth that much. People don’t save articles and read them over and over again. Even a brilliant op-ed or feature article can’t command that price. So how is publishing company to make money then? Given that subscriptions don’t seem to be viable?
I have two thoughts to that end.
First, I think micropayments can win through here. The idea of micropayments is simple. The end user doesn’t actually go into a shopping cart and pay three cents when they find an article they want to read. What they do is pay $20 and slowly eat through their two cent and three cent articles. Once their account is depleted, then they pay another large chunk.
I think a smart marketing team can figure out how to make micropayments palatable the end user. I know I have yet to run into one that I like. I think promotions offering a free initial $10, contests or drawings or whatever to give away $5 increments, posting karma that gives back credits, etc. could go a long way to pushing the new paradigm and making it acceptable.
Second, I think the new print media can survive on ad revenue alone, just not the way it has been trying to do so to date. Why do I assert this? Because there are bloggers out there today making a living from ad revenue. Print media is hard pressed to do this because of the overhead (gross generalization there). A blogger’s overhead is tiny compared to a full service newspaper or magazine. So how can print media adapt?
To start, stop printing. I think that is so obvious I don’t need to elaborate. The world is has moved on.
Next, specialization is going to be necessary. Magazines pretty much do this already. Ads and referral programs work for blogs that are recognized as the leaders in their fields. The problem newspapers face is very real. There simply aren’t enough people out there that want to view their content. This holds true for the local village rags all the way up to the ilk of USA Today and the New York Times.
The local paper is more obviously lacking readership. There are only so many people in the world that want to read about Mrs. Anderson’s cat being rescued from a tree.
The big papers suffer from redundancy. If I pick up the USA Today I have to read their vision of what are the top stories in the nation for entertainment, money, sports, etc. However, I can find far better coverage in any of these subjects online. All USA today does is consolidate these broad categories into something I can take on the airplane. I begrudgingly give USA Today my time because they are all I got in that disconnected world. However, this world is fading, and fading fast. Why would I pay for USA Today’s second rate news when I can get the first rate stuff directly off the internet? For technology I’d go to Ars Technica, for politics I’d hit Politico, for sports I’d visit ESPN.com, etc. USA Today can simply not compete with this quality, let alone depth, and thus it become irrelevant.
The brain trust at the New York Times has already figured this out. A lot of people scratched their heads at NYT’s ill-fated scheme to charge for the privilege of reading their columnists. To me this made perfect sense, but it was an idea before its time. The NYT realized what I just spelled out, that there are hyper-specialized websites that already pass their general news sections in depth and in breadth. What they have is their brilliant commentary, those best-in-class pundits of every subject that wax so eloquently about whatever. In fact, I was especially bummed when I couldn’t get to the NYT opinion section without paying for it; as that’s the site I went to for first class commentary, just like I go to Ars Technica for technology news.
So where does this leave local news? Is it now a thing of the past? I doubt it. We’re living in an era of technological disruption, but that doesn’t mean that local news is dead. The printing press helped usher out the town crier, but people still found a way to get their local news. I really have no clue what shape local news will take in the future, but I for one am excited to see what emerges.
Donning my amateur sociologist hat, I think we’re undergoing something more than a mere technological disruption with respect to local news. In reality we’re also in the process of redefining what local means at a sociological level. There is no denying that the world has been getting smaller. The internet is just one more step in the shrinking process. It is not uncommon for someone to know more about an online friend– someone they’ve never met face to face– than their own next door neighbor. What exactly does “local” mean in that context? How is the need for news going to be met in light of our continuously shrinking world community?
The problem with the disruption of print media is the evaporation of credibility. Now everyone can become a reporter. However, not everyone is a professional quality reporter. What print media had established was a nice hierarchy of quality. Everyone knew the difference in credibility between an article published in the National Enquirer versus one published in the New York Times. The same held true for the quality of a feature found in The Atlantic Monthly versus one found in Chainsaw Digest. The idea of this traditional pecking order evaporating is rather daunting, for both professional journalists and those that consume their work.
Somehow there has to be a way to distinguish between an angry teenager in his mom’s basement slanderously rumormongering and a professional investigative journalist cranking out Pulitzer caliber work. But given that the internet is the great equalizer (and anonymizer) how can their respective works be verified and fact-checked?
I suspect this problem will be solved by technology. There are already a few hints of this concept surfacing. Wikipedia polices itself with a blurb at the top of articles that are considered dubious, opinionated, or needing more references. Web sites such as factcheck.org and politifact.com carefully monitor claims politicians make. Snopes.com is an excellent source for dispelling everyday rumors and random nonsense that travels around the internet.
I envision some truthiness standard emerging in the future. This would harbor similar elements to Google’s Page Rank algorithm. Content sites would be rated on their past ability to stick to the truth. Another route would be more along the lines of the “certification” model. Just as ecommerce sites have various badges of certification they can display in their checkout process (like Authorize.net or VeriSign), so too may emerge similar badges and certifications models for content sites.
Maybe I should get busy and develop a content trust model and make Maverick Technology Company a million dollars.